Scene 15 – Statues

Building the giant Easter Island head inspired versions of Charles Rangel, General McChrystal and Hamid Karzai was a task we couldn’t wait to see Justin undertake. He had never sculpted before but his drawings are just magnificent and we knew he’d be able to turn these three out like no one else.

Here’s just a sampling of his work in process leading up to the completed sculpts…

After Justin completed the sculptures we spent a good amount of time testing different lighting set ups. Even though the final statues were grey we put cool and warm gels over the lights to get he different colors…

Finally, after the lighting was worked out it was time to film the actual characters. In the original storyboards for the shot they were going to be pulled out of frame and into the darkness. Once we got into production we realized it would be cleaner to just light up a scrim in front of them. Here’s the footage that got used in the final shot. Thank goodness for blue gels!